You Make Your Path By Walking: Navigating Loss, Betrayal, and Grief with Suzanne Anderson Artwork

Ebb and Glow

Welcome to Ebb and Glow — the podcast that shows you how everyday people are taking on life’s ups and downs and coming out better than before. Your host, Jenelle Tremblett, will be with you weekly and with special guests, to chat about everything from careers, relationships, mindset, and everything in between. Are you tired of only seeing the highlight reel? Me too. This podcast will instead be peeking behind the curtain to reveal all the steps, pep talks, and glasses of wine that must happen before we become strong, confident, and resilient.

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Ebb and Glow

You Make Your Path By Walking: Navigating Loss, Betrayal, and Grief with Suzanne Anderson

August 28, 2023 • Jenelle Tremblett • Episode 142

#142: Suzanne Anderson discusses pivotal moments in her life, including her career choices and her husband's tragic suicide while she was writing her second book. Suzanne emphasizes the importance of embracing all emotions during times of grief and the significance of rituals as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind.

She highlights the role of time in healing and the transformative power of being present during challenging times. Suzanne also shares insights on leadership, the evolving balance between feminine and masculine strengths, common limiting beliefs hindering women in leadership, and the importance of self-awareness and work-life balance. Listeners gain valuable insights into leadership, personal growth, and breaking free from limiting beliefs.

Overall, the episode offers an inspiring journey through trauma, loss, and transformation, providing hope for listeners facing similar challenges.

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Welcome to the ebb and glow podcast. I'm your host, Janelle Tremlett. And I'm a firm believer that even when life doesn't go as planned, it is taking you exactly where you're meant to be on this podcast. I'm here to help you finally release control of what you think you want and begin to just trust in the ebbs and flows of life. Each week, I will show you how to build that positive mindset radiate with self confidence and cultivate an unshakeable resilience. Let me prove to you that even when life ebb. You will glow. Hello everyone. And welcome to episode 1 42 of the Eben glow podcast. Today's episode is with my guest, Suzanne Anderson. She is the founder of the mysterial woman. She's a psychologist and author, coach leadership consultant and transformational teacher. Her pioneering work in guiding others to awaken their full feminine and masculine strengths, combines insights and practices from ancient wisdom. Depth psychology and modern neuroscience. Suzanne has dedicated the past 30 years to decoding and embodied integral and accelerated archetypal pathway to unlock the next level of our innate potential. Combining her graduate studies in women's development, psychology together with her decades as a leadership consultant, Suzanne wisely guides women to awaken to the next level of consciousness and leadership capacity, making the changes in themselves that they want to shape in the world. she facilitates global online programs, workshops, and retreats, and is the coauthor of the triple award winning book. The way of the mysterial woman upgrading how you live, love and lead. The interesting part about Suzanne, which is what brought us together. Is that just as she and her coauthor had completed the first draft of her first book and we're ready to launch some new programs. Her beloved has been actually committed suicide. And within a few months, everything that she had held most precious to herself was cleaved away like a giant iceberg falling into the sea. And really she was standing on the edge of a very new life. Suzanne experience how the way of the mysterial woman held up in her first book and this new transformational journey cemented her commitment to making this pathway available to as many people as possible. So towards the second half of this conversation with her today, we start talking about her new book titled you make your path by walking a transformational field guide through trauma and loss. And this second book really describes how, when she lost her husband, how her shattering breaking apart was also a profound breaking through to a deeper experience of her true nature. This book recently got published June, 2023. So at the time of this recording, it launched a month ago. So I highly recommend checking it out. Well, enjoy the episode and make sure to share it with a friend. Okay. Enjoy. Suzanne, thanks so much for being here. Well, thank you for having me, Janelle. Great to be here. Of course. It's the beginning of the week, a Monday, and one thing that I do a lot is I actually pick a word of the week every single week to kind of set an intention. Some people do it for a full year, I do it weekly because life changes weekly. So my question to you is, what intention or word do you want for this upcoming week? Well, I'm going to say I'm actually heading back to a family reunion on in New Brunswick, which is quite, I live in Seattle now, so it's quite a journey. It's like coast to coast and all the various things. So the word I'm holding and the vision I'm holding is flow. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For all the things I have to get done before I go, for the travel, for being with my wonderful family. Yeah. How long will you be there? Ten days. Nice. Yeah. It'll be fantastic. You go Seattle, Toronto, then New Brunswick? I do not do it like that. I do. Seattle, Chicago, Chicago, Bangor, and then drive because where I go is St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which is down there on the tip of New Brunswick and Bay of Fundy, and then drive. Actually, I get now, now there's an Uber guy who I get to pick me up. And drives me to the border, drops me off in Callis, Maine, and then I take my little roller suitcase, cross the bridge, like, you know, a prisoner exchange, and go to the New Brunswick uh, Customs Control. Yeah. And then my family picked me up there. Nice. It is gonna be a long journey. It is always a very, very long. I leave, the flight that leaves Seattle is at 6 a. m. So, yeah. I always say there's something about Vancouver that I really love and I really could picture myself living there, but Given that my family is on the East coast of Canada, like that's a journey to go home and I like ridiculous and I always say if my family is on the most easterly point of Canada, I would rather be in Europe. Like, honestly, the, the flights are probably simpler to come from Europe to home as opposed to Vancouver over Canada is so big. Absolutely. Now, where are you from? I know you, I saw Newfoundland. So, your family's still there? Yeah, still there. My mom is still in the house that I literally lived my whole life. Like, when I go home, I still sleep in my childhood bedroom. Isn't that awesome? That is amazing. I know. So many people like don't have that. I know. Same exact bedroom. I grew up my whole life. Wow. With so many people. My mom. That's really interesting. It's got to be interesting for you when you go home because I would imagine, you know, in the context of the kinds of things we'll talk about here in our, in our time. You know, the, your childhood self for better or for worse probably gets easily activated when you're there. What do you find? Oh my God. This is not even an interview about me, but to answer you. Yeah. Like the moment you go home, doesn't matter how old you are, you're back to that 15 year old teenager. All the same triggers come up. my mom was visiting recently a few weeks ago and she was here for like four or five days and I think it was the first time ever we didn't fight or argue and I'm like, are we both growing and maturing? So yeah, yeah, it's it doesn't matter. Like, yeah, like you said, the, the childhood stuff is still there. It doesn't matter how old you are and your parents still treat you like a kid. All the time. It's very hard. That's very hard. But this is actually the uh, I'd say the, the centerpiece of the, of the work that I do is in fact helping and not the work I do with women, but, we get hardwired when we're younger. You know, what fires together, wires together, and we get hardwired around things that we What we do to get love, safety and belonging, so we have to put parts of ourselves in the shadow or in the backyard, or, you know, sort of, you know what I'm saying? So that then means we, we don't have access to those parts of ourselves in the same way. And then we grow up and we're up in our world and we start to have a little more, you know, maybe let's say. anger. You didn't have access to your anger when you were younger because it wasn't a good thing to do. That did not get you the, the love that you were looking for. And so you have a hard time bringing your anger. Now, maybe you're starting to cultivate it with friends, but when you go home, all that firing wiring goes on and it's like you lose your voice. You feel disempowered, it can really happen, but you can also do an enormous amount of growing in those environments if you bring your self awareness with you. I think that's a lot of it, the self awareness. Are you nervous about anything going home to a family reunion? No, I'm not actually, I'm looking forward to it. This is um, the first time since COVID that we've all, my family live all over the globe and So, you know, I love my siblings and love to be with them and love to see their spouses and kids. And it's usually pretty great. We're a very doing active family. So they're fun where there'll be lots of activities in line and I find as long as there's something for everyone else to keep their attention on and arguing seems to lessen, which is, it's very interesting. Now, I want to ask you a little bit actually, not a little bit, a lot around your leadership consulting. How did you get into that work a long time ago? And like, what did you love about it? Because I feel like you were doing that for a long time. I was doing that for a long time. Um, I was consulting for actually based in Toronto. In fact, my firm was, was, was there what I loved and I kind of came into it through as many consultants did. This was In the eighties, I guess, nineties, early nineties. I had a background in experiential education. I'd worked with outward bound for a while. I saw the potency of learning through experience, not just learning through theory. And uh, the firm that I was a part of the consulting firm in Toronto had that approach of, you know, teaching sort of. experiential learning in the classroom. And in fact, we also took people out to ropes courses. We were one of the first consulting firms that took executives out to ropes courses to work with risk taking and, you know, team building and all that sort of stuff. That's completely normal now and everybody does it. But at the time it was pretty edgy. I think I've always loved. How being a part of how people grow, I'm very interested in creating the conditions, let's say, for potential to awaken. I've always been like that. It was like that as a little kid. In fact, I mean, if, if I learned to do dance, I wanted to teach the other little kids how to do it. I learned skiing. I wanted to, I became a ski instructor. I mean, I, I love helping others. So that was pretty deeply wired in me. What's something that you noticed in terms of executive leadership at the beginning of consulting and how you saw that change throughout the years, the decades. Yeah, well, what, what was really quite significant was this balance of, what I would call I came to call feminine and masculine strengths and how they were valued. So when I was came into that world, first of all, the management consulting world was very masculine. There were very few women at the senior levels I was working at. And it was a lot of still the structure of the organizations were very command and control and a lot of that more patriarchal bureaucratic organization. But then in the nineties, Things were starting to shift. The internet was just about to come in. Microsoft is coming into reality, you know, and the bureaucracy was too slow. So companies were having to learn how to share, and the individuals in them, how to share power. how to collaborate, how to connect, how to hold multiple pieces of information at the same time, that sort of multitasking diffuse awareness. And, and that's what we were, we were doing. And we were very good at, and that was distinct, a big shift that was happening in corporations and with executives. But then the women that were in those roles of which there were not very many were, had been hardwired as we've talked about around masculine. Models of leadership. And they were the hardest, the most resistant to what I was bringing, which was fascinating. I find I come from the business world. I sell real estate in the city now. And I mean, that is, there's a lot of women in real estate. It's a great career for women, but I find a lot of women in higher levels, or even just women that have been in real estate for a long time, sometimes they come with such this masculine, aggressive. Energy, I find extremely off putting and did you see that sometimes in the higher level? Yeah. And so what I would say now that then just, I'm going to say this and then we come back to there. This gap between women were actually suffering and I was seeing that and in executive retreats I do, they tell me how they were. How hard it was and or they bring some of their insights, but that couldn't bring them into the executive meetings. The next day, they were just like, literally hardwired to be one of the boys. So there was something happening. I decided this someone needs to do this work. And, and then, you know, long story short, I, I decided I was one of the people to do that work. I'm back to graduate school, figured out how women develop and then really spent this focus for 10 years on women. And how to help them really bring more of their authentic potential into the workplace. So what I discovered that the research was around, what is feminine? What is masculine? I mean, I really didn't know. I was seeing what I thought was, wow, that is like, you know, hyper masculine the way they're behaving when you're just describing that hard pressing drive forward. What is, is that all that masculine is? And when I say, I think they need feminine, what is that that they need? So, so that was really, that was the exploration for me to discover what that meant. Now you think of the yin yang symbol, which you know, probably right. The white and black That's ancient, goes way, way, way back, thousands of years. This idea, we know that yin and yang is the center of everything. That's how creation occurs in human life. But also, I think, you know, in the universe itself. We have been oriented in the last 5, 000 years toward a more masculine paradigm, which hasn't been wrong, by the way, it's been evolutions move forward, but now we simply need more of the feminine. We can talk a bit about what these mean, but we need that to come together with the masculine to, to to solve today. I agree. I always found, and maybe this is a little bit of internalized misogyny, but I always preferred reporting to men in my experience because I found them to, and this was like early in my career. Obviously I don't really report to anyone else. I'm self employed, but when I was in my twenties working in like the nine to five world, I always enjoyed reporting to men more because I found them to be a little bit more relaxed and they allowed themselves to have a lot more trust in their employees and teams than I found that women ever did. I found women, they, they spent way too much time and energy on the small, little, tiny details that were so time wasting and always micromanaged a lot more. Oh, interesting. What do you think about that? Now, mind you, I've had some bad guys and some great women leaders as well, but majority I preferred reporting to men. Right. Well, yeah. And I'm curious, that's interesting to hear what you're saying because this is fairly recent I assume, you know, it's in the last 10 years, right? Yeah. Within the last 10 years. Because I certainly began in the work I was doing And then the work I did specifically with women, when I moved to Seattle, I was doing my programs, my university women's leadership programs, and people were coming from Microsoft and Starbucks and various companies. And I saw them changing. I saw the shift actually occurring, but no, that's not everybody. That's for sure. But something was really, and even, even during the pandemic. Something was starting to happen with, with students in my programs where they realized that they'd given up some, they realized more deeply, let's say, that they'd given up yeah, the fact that they wanted to be home when their kids got home. And how do you do that? And how do you take a stand for yourself? And at the same time be. Be successful in the work that you're doing and, and find that balance. And sometimes that does mean you, you can't be home every day with your kids, but if you never even have that as an option in your mind, you know, you don't present it as a way you don't, you know, lobby for it, advocate for it. So, yeah, that's interesting what you're saying that that's, you still finding that. Yeah, and I find it when I'm still, it's more of like when I'm dealing with no, no, no, I shouldn't even like state a certain age. There is a lot of women within real estate that I sometimes deal with and interact with that I think are way too sharky than they need to be. And I'm like, you're a beautiful woman. Like You can do a lot less and still have the same success. Like your influence will come out naturally. Like you don't have to be this like hardened personality. And it's like I said, from the beginning, I find it very off putting and I'm noticing myself noticing it and then making changes and reflecting on how I operate my business to say, Hmm, how do I operate a very successful business and keep everything. Organized and moving along, but still have this like feminine influence and energy. It's a tough balance to strike. 100%. And I am a dominating personality too. Right. So you, you can be strong. So it isn't a matter of that, that, that I think feminine is very, very strong and um, the masculine is very strong. My first book, The Way of the Mysterious Woman, I really, That, that is where I lay out the research around what is the feminine, what is the masculine and there are different aspects of the feminine and different aspects of the masculine, but they're both super strong and we've just gotten over leveraged in the masculine. Sometimes when women come into my programs, they're worried, but I don't want to lose my, you know, I've worked so hard for this and absolutely not that. I don't want you to lose that either, but at the same time, you've, you've got like, you know, One leg of the, this beautiful cross pollinating set of forces operating or one, you know, got the masculine mostly and what actually happens when, when the feminine comes in is the thing that I think we're here to be discovering. And I, you know, what you're just describing, I would say. Women on the edge of evolution, because the work I do is with women mostly, but this would be true for men. We're in one of these incredibly tumultuous moments in culture. And we know this. In the first book, we lay that out, the research around that. I mean, this isn't new. People have been able to track the phases of culture that we've been in. And whenever you're in a transition, there's always this... You know, shaking up, waking up kind of time. And so where you are, the choices you made at your age to not just follow the status quo, that was not easy and you're not necessarily going to find a lot of other people doing what you're doing. You are a pioneer in that way and, and be willing to be there. And that's what you, why you got your podcast, I'm sure it's just to start to be a voice for new ways of doing things, of being in the world. Tell me some uh, company scenarios that you worked with and you saw some beautiful changes within their organization because some of the most successful corporations really comes down to great leadership. If you have bad leadership. It's going to crumble, right? It's going to domino and the pyramid is going to fall pretty quick. Yeah. Well, way back when I was more of a consultant, because that is very much my distant past. And then I was more of a coach working with women inside of organizations. So it's a little bit different. Although sometimes I was working with CEOs or owners, women owned businesses. So we can talk about that. But what I did do that, I'm, I'm really proud of it. A certain phase of my career was to be my company and the consortium I was a part of were chosen to do IBM's global transformational leadership change program. And this was when this is in the 90s when they were in the midst of this massive So it was. Shift from command and control siloed organizations to this very new way of leading. And uh, it was an incredible experience of working with all the executives worldwide. And, and I saw, I dramatically saw things begin to change in the C suite and then the way that rippled into organizations. I remember getting, and I worked at, it was mostly with men at that stage because there weren't that many women at those levels. But I remember hearing and even receiving letters sometimes from spouses of these executives who would say, thank you so much for the role you've played because, of course, once the person changes inside the corporate environment, if they learn, for example, to open up emotional intelligence and actually bring their own emotional intelligence and then have empathy to be with you, learn to listen, of course, that translates Yeah. Home. In the home with kids. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So, so that would go back in my consulting days. But I think that in the recent years, I'd say, I think of a woman who runs a, a nonprofit and very powerful, creative women. She and another woman founded the organization that is addressing childhood or. young sexual slavery, I guess you'd call it. Yeah. And her organization is phenomenal and she's really, she, her, the way she started to lead and to be able to give power away and created a, a female initially, anyway, it was a circle around her of like a board of directors, but really more of a. advocacy holding circle, which is so different than, you know, being a leader in a more masculine model. And uh, this organization has gone on to, to just really make a huge impact in the, in the world of sex trafficking. for her specifically, why did she come to you to get some coaching? What did she feel like she was missing or not living up to her full potential? Yeah, I think in this case, she was struggling with Being this woman in a seat of power and owning it fully, you know, being able to really, you know, there's a phenomenon called kill the queen that I've talked about sometimes that, which is basically if I'm powerful and you're powerful, one of us has to go down, you know, to be able to be, and there's a sort of evolutionary and neuroscience you know, root system to that, but the work today is to be able to feel Confident enough in yourself and landed enough in yourself that you can get feedback from others and you can let you can delegate and let other people have the power and authority they need and not take personally the things when you, when you have in, in, in psychology, we call it differentiation where you have to have a stand and I, I know what I know, and I know that this is correct and you may not like it. Yeah. And that's okay, but I have, so how do I work with you in a way that I can make a hard decisions have taken your input in and then let you have whatever feelings you have and not make them about me. Do you understand that principle? Yeah, it's hard. It's very hard. It's, it's a, it's a, a growth principle of differentiation that we all have to learn, actually, that it's not something you're just born with and you learn it in this way where you have more self awareness. And you begin to see how your whole sense of self is so constructed by how somebody's going to, you know, see you or not see you, approve of you or not approve of you. Yeah. You know, you sort of, that's the work to set yourself free. Talk to me about some ways that women operate within leadership or within running their own businesses that aren't effective. Mm. Okay. Well, that would be, the five limiting beliefs that we discovered in our research, working with hundreds of women. I mean, and these, we did not invent, they just, this is all, as I say, they came out from the research. They just kept showing up. But yeah, and these. Have everything to do with what drive what I would say are is ineffective behavior or Downright, you know destructive behavior in organizations and relationships, right? So one is I am NOT enough So that was the primary so I'm gonna go these actually in a sequence So I am NOT enough and you can imagine if you don't feel like you're enough Then you're either going to have to become The, the one that, you know, proves, keeps proving myself again and again um, because I don't feel like that inside or I cower away and I don't show up fully, right? So the other one connected to that first one is I have to do to be of value. Yeah, I resonate. We'll come back to that one. Yeah, my being has no value. And these actually hook up together in what I call the first polarity. I am not enough and I have to do to be of value. And then the second polarity, the first one there is I don't belong. I don't belong, you know, and again, you can imagine the two sides of that. And I'm sure maybe a lot of women joining a mass, like a very male dominated industry. It's probably seeing all the time that you don't feel like you belong 100% and basically that's every organization, right? We're still making, we've had 5, 000 years inside this masculine paradigm of consciousness and we've created organizations and structures in our lives and governments and everything based on that. Those mental models. So that's what we've got right now and it's in the process of changing because there are people that are beginning to look at things differently, but, but I don't belong is super deep for women, even if you didn't have that in your own family. And many of us experienced that when we were young, you know, we felt a bit different and we think we're from another planet. And where did you come from? How did I land up in this family? And so. And then connected to that one is I'm not free to express myself. It's the giraffe principle where I stick my neck out and I'm afraid it's going to get cut off. And then the last one is I don't have enough knowledge or influence or connections. You know, I see that a lot in women in their early twenties that are starting to join their workforce. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, and you know, there's for jobs and Yeah. Right. And, and that's also understandable. I'll just say, you know, there is a place for, I, I need another degree, or I need to go back to graduate school, or, I'm open to learning that that's understandable and not personally. I feel that's a lifelong process. I mean, That once you wake up to the fact that you are a work in progress, you are, you are an ongoing becoming, we could say, then you're okay with wanting to learn and grow, but that's different than I, I can't really be myself fully because I don't have that graduate degree yet, or I haven't worked here before, or, you know, it's, it's, Or I don't know enough people, or I don't have enough influence, it's a kind of, that's a very different limiting belief. So all of those beliefs, just to lay them out there, are operating, what I would say, is deep down in the DNA, I mean literally in the DNA. These have been encoded. Into our deep operating system, so they don't get uprooted, they don't get uprooted by just having it consciously here. You've actually got to do the work and that's the programs I do to identify where you are attached to that old code. It sounded like for you, the I have to do to be a value. Oh, yeah, I feel like I can never stop. And it's almost the the fear of stopping. It's like, well. Will the success keep coming if I stop doing? Yeah, right. Yeah. Have you had experiences where you will Stop and you feel is it too much anxiety? What happens for you when you know, it's there's nothing but benefits I'm getting better. I'm getting better. I'm definitely taking longer extended vacations and really just turning off and Yeah, over the years within this industry, I've set a lot of boundaries to of, of realizing this doesn't need to be answered right now, a lot of the times taking some time to respond. Actually allows people to cool off a bit more. I've learned it over the years, but definitely still. And maybe it's because I'm still in the building stage of being in this business where it's like, it's hard to know when to turn off, but I would say I'm better than most of knowing when to turn off before I burn out. That's good. Well, this is the, these two have to do to be a value and I am not enough go together. In other words, there's that sort of, there can be because of the hard wiring over millennia, there can be a sense if I don't keep do, do, do, do, doing, I will. I'll, I'll be in that terrible feeling of I'm not enough, which is the existential anxiety. The liberating belief, just let me say, that sort of becomes available when you do the deep work of reclaiming parts of yourself is, I am enough, just as I am, and empowered To do what is mine to do. And what is mine to do is not everything. It's not everything. And it's really profound for me to see when I see women changing just that, you know, working that polarity, because what starts to happen is, first of all, you know, as women who are in organizations, you aren't doing everything. Therefore, you have more space to be doing the things that are yours to do, which may be the visioning. It may be resting, it may be relaxing. And then it also allows space for others to do what they need to do, just kind of waiting to do, but you don't give them room to do. Out of those five, did you experience any of those throughout your career? Oh, a hundred percent. I wouldn't say I can recognize. I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't have recognized those. I'd say the deepest one for me, that, and by the way, I don't view these as... limiting beliefs that you're just going to do a program with us or do some work and they're gone. These are deep down encoded. So it's, it's, you do layers of work. I keep coming around and every time I do a program, I get the chance to be steeped in it again. But the, the, the, the deepest one for me is probably, I do not belong. That's the one. And I, well, there are a number of reasons for that. Probably I can look at. You know, my family of origin a sense of, okay, I am, came from a very scientific family of academics and people in in the more linear scientific worldview, physicians and PhDs and all of that world. And I was starting to have other experiences when I was a teenager of other, yeah, I would call it a spiritual experience. And I was very emotionally aware. and tuning in to things that nobody gave credit to. So I often felt like, yeah, this is not, where did I come from? I don't, I love my family very much. I loved them, but I felt very different. So, That, that was sort of got coded in to me that I'm a little bit different and, and I've I mean, I would say that as the, the, the place I sit in, in culture right now is not in the mainstream, although I've been in the mainstream, I was very much in the mainstream of my consulting world. And then the research I did Around women in leadership, I put an org in universities. So it would be very, you know, legitimate. Like I'm, I would consider myself a bridge person. I now feel very differently about the whole academic and scientific world. And my work is based on neuroscience as well, but I also know I'm kind of an edge person. You know, I'm bringing in new ideas and I'm, I'm comfortable with that. I'm more comfortable with that. Let's say. When you coined the term the Mysterial Woman and launched your book back in 2016, what was the reaction overall? Yeah, it was actually surprising to me because I think I knew, I knew from our people that were in our programs that we'd figured some things out and they were the ones that pushed myself and my co author, Dr. Susan Cannon to write this book. So I knew we'd, we'd decoded something, this pathway basically for women to wake up to the next level of their potential, but we were in a relatively small, you know, in world here based in Seattle and and all of a sudden I was on in the, in the world. I did a book tour in Europe and. All over the place. And it was right at that time that I began to do online programs because I'd gone way before it became necessary, of course, with COVID and so on. Zoom had just come out, was really clunky, but it was doable. And, uh, there were people that had the book in, in Europe and were, and I was giving keynote talks in different women's leadership conferences. So, it was really exciting phase. It was like, there was, I think a sense of women's readiness, enormous readiness to, to have a map. I remember that there was a women's leadership conference I spoke at in Rome and there were a lot of women there from European companies that companies like Nestle and other companies had sent them all younger women in their thirties. And they had no model and I went, they just came up to me afterwards and it was such a great thing. You know, like what? Tell us more about this. Like there's actually a model. I know I don't want to do what my mother did, which was become one of the boys or stay home. I don't want to do what my father's doing because I never see him. He's just a workaholic and there's got to be some other model and you're saying there is and we want to know what that is. So, yeah, it was pretty exciting. I resonate. I always say to people, one of the biggest reasons I moved into real estate is because I feel like it's still one of those careers that you can have a family and have a career and basically have it all. And as a, as a mom, like you can, if that's a path that I go down, this business, I could train to work around my life. If I had to pick kids up at three, I do everything with them. And then I work later on, you know what I mean? I'm not answering to anyone and, and losing time with my family. Like I could, I'm the type of person that wants it all, all the time. And I think that's one of the careers that I could have it. So yeah, like I said, that's one of the biggest reasons I switched. Yeah, that was a good career choice for you. But I, I also feel, and I've seen it's very possible to wherever you go, there you are, as they're saying, you know, so it's very possible once you start to wake up to your own value and it includes all of who you are, then you can also be in mainstream organizations. You're just going to be in them differently. And that may mean there, and there are always trade offs. You can't, I don't have the view that You can't have it all at one time. There may be trade offs for sure. Yeah. But knowing those and making those consciously is very different than I have no choice. And I'm just in this, you know, great, I'm not enough. I have to do to be a value, you know, river and I can't get out. Yeah. I want to change gears a little bit when you We're launching that book or writing that book. Your husband took his own life during that time. Yes. Yes. You said when the manuscript was being written or when you were promoting it? No, it hadn't uh, I hadn't found a publisher yet, so this was when I would. a huge moment in my life. And that is the second book that you make your path by walking that just came out just a month ago, actually. So it's, it's just making its way in the world. But the first book was written, the manuscript. And we were about to launch a program that we hadn't done a program for, it's been about a year while we were writing, compiling all the research and then writing and then yeah, obviously that sort of up and out and I'm going to fly into the world with this work and did not happen. It was an enormous cataclysmic and very traumatic event for me. My beloved husband took his life and. And with it really, as I say mine, as I knew it, I mean, really everything changed very, very quickly. And so the second book, this, the new book was not even all about that. Well, yes. No, I had no idea. going to write a book. I was just first going to go through this in what I call the way of the Mysterial Woman and that's the first book. Did you pause everything and really sit with that grief and process that or did you process the grief while still continuing on with your own life? Well, there was no way to hit pause on what was happening in, you know, my life was what was coming down around David's business that was about to implode, which was part of why he took himself out of this world and I was going to have to sell our state. And there were many, many things that had to happen. So. I couldn't put, hit pause on, on that. And then actually, you know, one of the main centerpieces of the second book is really around when things do happen like that, that are out of our control. They are our life. There isn't about a pause. Let me hit pause here until I get back to something that was before or till I let me if I can survive this, then I'll get somewhere where the good stuff starts to happen again. It's like, no, this is my life. And the more that I can bring myself into this present moment and be here, the more chance I have of Unfolding this in a way, in my case, that, you know, would be, would be positive or at the very least would be less damaging, let's just say, to, for me finding my way into the future. Without being so obvious, when your husband took his own life, What immediate feelings came up for you? Well, what do you mean without being so obvious? Obviously, you're upset, but I don't know, maybe this says a lot about me, but I would be in your situation a little irritated, where it's a little inconvenient. That's how I would feel. And I'm... No, I really don't get it. Well, first of all, irritated would hardly cover the word that, you know, for me, it was... Angry, very, very angry, but I was everything at once. So first of all, I was, he was my beloved husband. He really was my, my, my partner and we loved each other deeply. And you know, so I, we had no children, no. Okay. Just the two of you. Yeah. And although, you know, lots of nieces and nephews, but none of our own children. And so he was, so there was enormous grief. There was the loss of my, my beloved and the life that we'd planned together. Everything that was a part of our lives. And then, then there was also this absolute rage or anger that he would do that. So yeah, the betrayal, the, the way that he didn't take care of me, what he didn't do. And then there was the fear, the terror of what's going to happen to me and how am I going to go through this? And now, you know, that's just, I'm hitting the high notes of a whole, you know, cauldron of feeling, but the work that I do. Yeah. And did then is very much about how to be with your feelings. So I, I knew how to do that and they would come in great, you know, huge waves actually over time over especially that first year. So I would, I, I was absolutely committed to. Working with whatever feelings did come to process them so that, for example, if I would get to the place where I would forgive him, I would get there honestly. And I didn't, I wasn't sure I wasn't going to do what I call a spiritual bypass and just say it's, you know, he's in a better place. He's not suffering and whatever. Um, I'm glad people usually go that route. And I'm like Uh, that doesn't seem authentic to me. Like, I, yeah. Well, I mean, I think people do what they can do and I, I don't have a lot of judgment around that. I do feel they do what they can do and manage the incredible overwhelm in the nervous system. I think for me. I, I had an intention to want to get to forgiveness because I know and knew that if I hold back forgiveness, I hold back my own freedom. I wanted my own. You're poisoning yourself. A hundred percent. You're creating that inside of you. Yeah, that's right. But I wanted it to be. Embodied like that freedom needed to be embodied, not an idea in the mind, and that's very much the work I do. So that meant I had to process the anger. I had to go through all the ranges of feelings to get to the place where I could really make more space for his suffering and understanding of his suffering. And honestly, he just, he did the best he could. Now, the impact on me was enormous. I can accept where we got to. I mean, I got to a place where I could say, I, I forgive you. I forgive you for, for how you left and when you left. I know for me, if I had someone really close to me that did that. Who would take me a long time to get to forgiveness. Yeah. And that's, that would be a, and I'd probably make myself Ill like really Ill just, with all the anger that would be inside me. Well, what I would hope is that you might find, reach out to me, or you might find a guide. Guide. There's better ways. Yeah. You might find a guide that could. Could hold the space for you to really feel what you needed to feel because very often, because we don't do that and it goes into the unconscious, you cannot come into the full loop of forgiveness. Think of the, of consciousness as an iceberg and we have two thirds of ourselves are under the water. That's the unconscious. One third is above the water who I think I am, but Most of who we are, you know, the two thirds of the iceberg is determining the direction of the iceberg. So you want to deal with what's under the surface. And so I think you do, as you said, you know enough now to say, this is doing more harm to me. And certainly it's not, it's not harming David anymore, for example, you know, right. I mean, this is the work I need to do, but I will do it honestly. And I did do it honestly. Yeah, right. My question to you is, how do you get from that place that you're speaking of to a place where you go through it all? And again, you come back to your natural way of, I want to teach people how to get through this now, right? Well, how long did that take? I I don't think I got back anywhere. I want to, I think that's what I have to just tease apart here and what you said. Okay. I think the, the opportunity when you go through a major life shakeup and you know, a lot of your audience may be younger, so it doesn't have to be As dramatic as what I went through. It can be the loss of a job. It can be the loss of some, a health, a way you, you know, some, some disease that you contract, it could be the loss of relationship that really you know, matters to you doesn't have to be even a marriage. It can be, you know, a good friend. The loss of, uh, of, uh, this, your singledom because you get married and you have a child, whatever it is, there can be a shakeup in your life where the norm, like who I thought I was. is gone now. And this, and this is actually, if there's anything in the second book, I think that I convey and I want people to get is that is a shakeup like that is, well, you call it a fertile ground for the new, which I think is a beautiful phrase. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. That's the possibility for something. uh, Becoming your own emergence, your own development, your own growth into, to you know, more of yourself than was ever possible before. So that isn't about going back. That isn't about, that is actually more like a spiral. It's like this horrible event. Let's say in my case, this traumatic event, I was very clear that I was going to make my path by walking, which is basically a metaphor for that. It's like, you know, the past is gone. It's gone. And what is coming is yet to be seen. So when everything happened for me, I closed down everything. I went to sell the property. As I said, I left my island community. I closed my business, a program that was actually scheduled to run. As I mentioned, a few days after David died, we postponed it did finally run in the, in the springtime, but, but everything else was on hold and it took me a year to get back to. With my coauthor to completing the book and looking for a publisher to have it come out. So that took, that took a lot of time. And then I eventually, another year later, once it came out, came back to my work again, but I came back to it very differently. I came back to it in one on one coaching, which I hadn't done for years. I'd done, you know, programs. So everybody. where we were in retreat based programs and, and I really have been in the journey of becoming in the next phase of my, my work. Now, I will say with the coming out of the new book because a lot of the students I've taught, they haven't necessarily known everything about what happened for me because it wasn't always relevant for their. For their work, but now they do and I am seeing how, you know, this is going to become more visible now. And just, just recently, I worked with 2 women who are in my programs, 1 whose niece suicided and 1 whose son was in a tragic mountain biking accident and broke his neck. And in both cases, you know, helping them really create the conditions. for themselves and for the people that they were a part of to be able to go through the trauma, right? What is some rituals that you use to get through the trauma when it all happens? Well, you're healing, right? My book is full of rituals. So that's one of the things that I really committed to. I've been teaching, I would say the art of ritual for a long time. And, and what is ritual? Well, it's, it's really a language that communicates More symbolically between the conscious and the unconscious and that's why and it's a sort of lost language I feel although it's it's coming back and I'm helping to bring it back because certainly many indigenous cultures use ritual Understand that you have to speak to both the conscious and the unconscious mind the left and right hemispheres of the brain So for me, it was very clear early on that there was Going to be a lot going on below the surface of the iceberg, two thirds of the iceberg. And one of the first rituals that I did was a ritual to kind of, it's actually gathering all of David's family, those that chose to come, and my closest friends, our closest friends. This was maybe two weeks after he died, and a ritual that a colleague and friend Ran for me and the way that it began, and this will just give you an example of what ritual can do. I had a vessel, this beautiful ceramic vessel that David was a collector of many Asian, beautiful things. He was actually imported Indonesian antiques. So this was his, his field, but he had this one beautiful, we had this one beautiful bowl, had a bit of a chip out of it. And. The, the, this time all 30, about 30 people were gathered in my living room and I was standing in front of the stone hearth in our, in our living room. And one of my good friends who's a psychotherapist and a shamanic practitioner started rattling the rattles. These just intense rattling. Some of them, some people may know that sound, it could just be, it's just feels like they're, it sounds like they're 10 people rattling. And when it got to sort of the fever pitch. I took this antique vessel and smashed it on the, on the hearth, and it broke into a million pieces. And what did that do for you? Yeah. And if you just sort of imagine it, even just as I share it now, you know, you can feel and what happened in the room and in me, it was like this sobering, but also congruence making. Experience of the point here the metaphor was I'm not putting this back together again. There's no way my life. This shattering is complete. Something new will emerge. But this is. Over it's not like one piece fell out and I'm going to glue it back in again. No, it's over. It's gone It was huge for me So again, this is you're speaking the neuroscience of this is you're speaking to the parts of you that are still hanging on Too can't I have that I've got to have that it will have that. I'll get it back again But it's, let's shatter it all and start again. Because that's actually what's happening. So the ritual, and there are many rituals that I identify and I share in the book. so people see what I did, but I've already had people say to me it was so helpful for them to create their own ritual. Like they get the sense of the structure of a ritual and why you would do that when you're going through loss. Yeah. Was it hard writing the book and going through all of that again and reliving it almost? Absolutely. Yeah. It took me. It was therapeutic in itself. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It was five years roughly where I knew it was time for me to write myself back together. I was not writing the book. Absolutely not writing the book. I knew the me of then needed to go and be with the me. of 2013, January 3rd, 2013. And that first year, okay. I needed to walk with her again because so much happened so fast. I, I, I needed to just be with myself again. And this can be very, very powerful for your listeners to, to, to do that writing. And absolutely. Even if you think you might have something to share with others as a book down the road, do not write. A book for others first, you know, write for yourself, like really come home to yourself in the writing and release it all. And I, and I did. Yeah. And integrate. It's also the integrating. It's, it's almost less releasing. It's more integrating. You bringing the self, you know, yourself of today and you're finding meaning. In what happened, then there's something that actually literally kind of integrates psychosomatically, so I would take myself away and do the writing and I did that for a week at week every, you know, six months or something. And a friend said. One of the islands was very, very powerful for me, very hard, very hard and very powerful. But I had friends, I had to do it by myself and I needed to create the environment that was just time for me and somewhere beautiful. And then I had friends who were available for me to call if I needed them, which I did sometimes. And then it was after that, I'd, I'd um, that took a couple of years probably of just this coming back again and again to the, my own healing. And then I sent it to the editor of the first book and she read it, what I had and said, I think this could be really helpful to others going through difficult. Changes in the lives and even just we can say in the globe today, you know, this is a big there is so much Already changing and many changes coming here soon. Has it been 10 years? It's been 10 years Wow No, there's no way I can even relate to the time of it feels like way less It's very odd. It's like when you go through trauma, first of all, there's something we call liminal time in psychology, which is kind of like, you know, the regular sense of time just goes. If you've had those times in your life, maybe you know how that is like you, you just get out of that linear mode. So that was absolutely what happened where I, the first couple of years, I can't even relate to his years. And then Yeah, I really, I, if someone had said to me without question, someone had said to me when this happened. You're going to, it'll be about 10 years and you'll or no, eight years, let's say, and you'll, you'll be ready to bring your book. You're going to write a book and bring it out. I would have said if I was going to write a book it would have been sooner than that. You know, like, I'll be through this. I'll get through this in a year or two. Not, not for me. It takes that long sometimes. It takes, it takes the time that it takes. I don't know how people go through traumatic things and write a book the next year. I really don't know how they do that. Everyone has their own thing. Do you think they process it later maybe? Or maybe they just process things really quickly. Maybe they do. I don't know. Yeah. I'm sure you're a big believer in uh, time heals all. Well, I say the grace of time is such a beautiful healing salve and anybody listening to this who's going through difficult times, you know, it's, it's, I remember hearing this phrase, this too shall pass for years before this happened to me and I never really got it, but it is true. that what you're going through right now, if you're going through a difficult time, it will not always be like that. That's the human journey. And so there is something about, if you can hold that understanding of it won't be forever, that will help you stay more present with what is right now. And the more present you can be with what is the more likely that will not take forever. Because sometimes what happens, we resist what's happening to us. And we actually stay stalled. Psychologically, and maybe in fact the new thing is trying to happen but we're not making space for it. We're not letting ourselves see it. Yeah. Last couple of questions for you. No idea where the time goes every single time. Obviously your book is for anyone that's dealt with trauma, but when you think about who is listening to this today, who really needs to read your book? Well, we've talked about both books, so I'd say I'm going to talk about both the new one and then I want to talk about the first one, too, because I think I'm just going to say, I think two different audiences, maybe they could be the same, but they could be different. They could be different as you're saying. So the current one, you make your path by walking a transformational field guide through trauma and loss can be for. Anyone, yeah, going through a shake up in your life right now in some way, where you're just in the, the, you know, that what was is no longer and you don't know what will happen or what's coming next. And that might be an internal urge, like, you just know this life you've been leading is not what's next. You know, that could be what it is, or it could be that life comes in and with an event, let's say, fate knocks on your door in some way. you're in that kind of a situation, or you could be someone who's just facing the climate crisis. I mean, realizing, wow, this is, this is really hard. What do I, you know, what's the future going to look like? And how am I going to go through that incredibly difficult world that we're in right now? Right. So that's one, that's one audience. And the, and the first book is, and it can be one of the same where that. Because the second book really, I think a lot of people, and I know this has already happened, will go back and get the first book because the first book is sort of the building blocks that gave me the operating system to go through this very difficult experience in my life in a way that led to more of me showing up in my life and to creating a life that You know, I could never have imagined actually but, but the first book would be if, if you're a woman and on the you know, in that moment of how do I, or maybe even curious about what is my feminine nature? What is my masculine nature? Either a sense of, I, I have got too much of my feminine, I can't really get out in the world and make a difference and feel empowered and make things happen. Or maybe I've got too much of the masculine and I. I'm just only doing that, and I don't have any of the softer, self caring, you know, collaborative, connective things going on in my life. This would be a great way for you to normalize where you are right now, which is, I think, women on the edge of evolution. I think we are in a big shake up right now, and we are trying to grow ourselves into a new version of our uh, the human species. And, and I think you would find it. As I know many, many others have reassuring to recognize you're not alone. You're actually part of a great wave of consciousness that's moving now. Yeah. And I mean, that's the premise of this podcast is knowing that you aren't alone with what you are going through. Suzanne. Thank you. Where can everyone find you I'll put the links of both your books in the show notes, but to connect with you, can you plug your website, Instagram, any social media channels? Yeah, I'm on pretty much all the channels, Mysterial Woman is M Y S T E R I A L, woman. com. And I'll just say Mysterial, that is a word that I invented and you'll find out on my website or in my book why and what it speaks to. But anyway, yeah. So MrWoman. com is on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all of that. And my website is MrWoman. com. So are you going to change that now that you're expanding into more books or are you going to keep that title? No, I think it's at the moment, it's still the same. I haven't really, I have the new book on that, that page on the, on the, my website and It's still the work I'm doing. It's still the, although the second book is written for men and women, so we'll see what happens in the future. But Suzanne, when we started this conversation, you said your word was flow and I didn't tell you my word. My word that I picked for this upcoming week is light, just like light energy. And I feel like both of those words combined, I feel like really did embody this podcast and energy. So I love when that happens. Yeah, that's it. And in fact, that's quite something because the topic you could say. Of the loss of the second book can be quite dark, but this is the whole thing is that the, the, the light and the dark are in a penetrating, that's the yin yang symbol. Dark is actually the feminine and the light is the masculine and the yin yang symbol. And so we are, we have both of these and you can be with very difficult and dark situations and have it, have your light be present. So. I like that. Suzanne, thank you so much for coming on here. I always never know what we're going to talk about, but as we said, it's always flows very naturally. So it's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Good to be here. If you love today's episode and you yourself have a story to share, I encourage you to come on the podcast and be our next guest. We'll talk about anything and everything that you want to chat about because no matter who you are, I know you have a story to share that can help someone else. Also, don't forget to check us out on YouTube. If you want to see the video version of this episode. Okay. See you next week.